Grants:IEG/WikiTrack/Timeline

This project is funded by an Individual Engagement Grant

Timeline for WikiTrack

Timeline	Date
Resource gathering, Research, Planning	10 07 2014
Development phase 1a: rewrite, consolidation. Visit diffs, rendering. 1st Draft.	31 07 2014
Development phase 1b: Features overview, addition. Review. 2nd Draft.	29 08 2014
Gathering Feedback. Optimization. Review.	18 11 2014
Final draft, Testing.	30 11 2014

Draft version of app to test

• Android: Download from here. Remember to leave your feedback on the talk page. It would help us!
  • The source code is here. (We'll be updating it here on this bitbucket repo as we go from here).

Monthly updates

Month 1 June

A brief summary of tasks touched upon during the month of June:

• Laid out a plan for the entire code structure. Worked towards an optimized code structure. A skeletal structure was prepared and analyzed to see how the app can be improved. A mind-map was readied for the project plan.
• Listed out the projects we'll be including in WikiTrack. Listed out languages that can be touched upon. We were introduced to the mediawiki API.
• We spent time evaluating Maven and Gradle to find a better option and settled for Gradle later.
• We worked on setting up the project environment using Gradle.

Month 2 July

A brief summary of tasks touched upon during the month of July:

• We went through the code of existing Wikipedia app on both the platforms. We studied the code and tried to derive reusable components and fine-tuned our own plan further * to ensure that WikiTrack shall be able to incorporate any future updates on the modules used from Wikipedia app.
• We went through the mediawiki API further to understand the available options of fetching data from various projects. We found out that the in-line Diffs aren't still available on Mediawiki API yet.
• We visited the Diffs problem. Earlier, we were fetching Diffs using XML/HTML. This had turned out to be not so good for mobile with very less screen space to work with. We needed a better solution for this.
  • We went through the code readied by Jeph on Visualization tool that he's readied. The approach of requesting the revisions and applying a Diff on the program sounded better, but avoiding HTML Diffs by masking them did not look like a long term option.

Month 3 August

Summary of tasks touched upon during the month of August:

• We came up with several demos on Android to present various approaches to Diffs for revisions.
• We tried to see if in-line Diffs could be an option.
• We went through Parsoid and looked at it for help with converting WikiText to HTML.
• Tried bliki to parse WikiText as well.
• Diffs were tried in-app, with google-diff-match-patch
• Settled for Diffs coming in from Mediawiki API directly. The problem now is handling the annoying tables.
• First draft of application was readied and tested on Android with multiple projects and language switch.
• Worked on optimizations for caching data and data handling on switch between projects and language switch.

Month 4 September

So far this month:

• Started working on the iOS version. Diffs handling still due.
• Explored additional features on iOS version of Wikipedia app to reuse some of the components.
• First alpha version of WikiTrack Android with multiple projects further improved and tested.
• Some UI improvements done.
• Started laying out a plan for metrics, user data collection.

ToDo:

• organize the code and share it on BitBucket. Decide on a relevant license (open source).
• Blog posts about the project and log the learning while working with Mediawiki API and the Diffs.
• Collect information on tools in relation to metrics and user data collection. Gather documentation for relevant privacy policy and release notes.

Month 5 October

Is your final report due but you need more time?

Extension request

New end date

Request an extension by two more months. The end date being January 30, 2015.

Rationale

We've been running slow in the process of making sure that we reuse as many components from the existing Wikipedia app modules as possible. Additionally, we've now planned on including some components for metrics as well (which was not part of the initial plan). We're running slow on the iOS version of the app as well - Apple moved over to Swift from Objective C with iOS8 and we're looking to use swift for the app as well as much as possible, keeping the future development in mind.

Hi, Hari. Given that you've not yet completed your midpoint report, I wonder if an end date of December 31st still seems reasonable to you. If not, do you want to update this request with a more feasible date before I approve a change? Warm regards, Siko (WMF) (talk) 01:20, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Siko, I've modified the date to Jan 30, 2015. Thanks much! --H P Nadig (talk) 01:39, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Ok, Hari, I'm approving this extension for 2 more months. Your end date is now January 30, 2015, with a final report due at the end of February. Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 19 December 2014 (UTC)